


smoke and steel

by beanfield



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst, F/M, King Alistair, Marriage, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Blight, Queen Cousland (Dragon Age), Rebuilding, Romance, The Blight (Dragon Age), Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 02:45:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19368415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanfield/pseuds/beanfield
Summary: A series of vignettes in the lead up to Queen (Elissa) Cousland's impeding wedding to the newly crowned bastard king. The aisle is long, and many ghosts dance upon the fine velvet that leads to the Grand Cleric herself.A Cousland-focused series of shorts of Elissa, Hero of Ferelden, as she prepares to wed the king upon the ashes of her house and the blood of the Battle of Denerim.





	1. Glory and Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elissa Cousland is the Hero of Ferelden, the beloved of the King, and the sister of a Teryn whose house and soul have nearly been destroyed. 
> 
> But she must be strong, as she faces down the nobles and the Revered Mother and Alistair, oh, Alistair, and for Fergus and her mother and father, for all she had lost and all she had saved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each of these chapters will have a guiding theme. This one is Glory and Pride: an examination of the Hero of Ferelden (such as she is) and the brother of the Hero, a Teryn who lost everything without knowing. 
> 
> Each has an accompanying song, although this is not a song fic: Glory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbeHq1CLqJ8) and Pride (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgGHVf7dCdw). 
> 
> If anyone has any recommendations on how to better embed these songs, then please let me know!

 

> _She is the Hero of Ferelden, bloodied and battered, as the crowds of awed citizens_  
>  _take in the sight of her bloodied armor and her matted hair. Alistair—King_  
>  _Alistair—marches beside her, but their eyes are on her, not their newly crowned_  
>  _monarch. His golden armor, his golden hair, his golden eyes, all in stark contrast to his_  
>  _ashen face. He is saying something quietly to her, but she feels too far away to hear it._  
>  _She thinks perhaps this is what drowning feels like, but she does not feel the cloying_  
>  _horror that had preceded their final battle. She had been raised by the sea and never_  
>  _feared it, only respected it. In the midst of all that noise, all those people, she hears the_  
>  _word “Hero” over and over again, until it no longer sounds like a word. It’s just a_  
>  _rustling of air, a sound carried off in the breeze. She wonders if Heroes ever remember_  
>  _who they were before, before their bravery and their feats, before, when they were small_  
>  _and at peace. She searches for her name within herself, and finds only the Hero remains._

 

The Revered Mother places the crown atop her head and she wills herself still. Her head does not wobble. It is not as heavy as she had feared, but she finds herself wishing it were heavier. Heavy as her griffon-wing helm. She can feel Fergus’s quiet, sad pride from behind her. Her cheek stings from the bristle of his beard when he had kissed her cheek and given her away before the Maker, to her new husband. Her ears still rang with the sound of his crackling voice.

  
“Father would’ve been so proud of you, pup,” he had said fondly, using a borrowed nickname. They were stood in the vestibule just before the throne room, awaiting the herald’s call. His smile still did not reach his eyes, but she thought she saw a spark there, somewhere deep.

  
He has lost so much already, she thought. _Does he fear he’ll lose me too_? But she willed away those unhappy thoughts, and instead forced a cheeky smile out of her mouth. “And you? You’re just mildly disappointed in me then?”

  
There was the spark she had longed to see, flaring up. A little, fragile thing, but she was desperate to keep it alive, to hold onto it and fan it into the flame she remembered.

  
She cannot be his little pup forever. She cannot be his only anchor to Highever, not when there are so many strings pulling her a thousand different directions. Denerim and Soldier’s Peak and Highever and Amaranthine and Weisshaupt, all begging her to be their Hero, to be the one to blot out the Blight. She turns, just slightly, and looks at Fergus from the corner of her eye. He looks so like Father, or what she had imagined Father had looked like when he was young and brash, the man who wrote poor poetry for a seahawk. He gives her a small nod, and the spark alights inside her, and maybe he shall see her fire and burn too one day. She tears her eyes away from her brother, and turns back to Him. Him, the reason for all of this, the light of her life and the light of a kingdom. Him, the one she loves and loved and will always love, whose sword and shield are her own, whose blood runs in her veins and whose heart pounds in her chest. He takes her hand, brings it to his lips and kisses it gently.


	2. Rose and Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elissa knows that the rose will die before the blight is over. Alistair knows that the crown weighs far more on his soul than on his shoulders. Still, they hold onto the beauty they can find in the ruins of a nearly-destroyed kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beauty & Burden
> 
> Rose, the Rose of Lothering, the Rose of Highever, the Rose of the Fifth Blight, the Rose of the Bastard King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v08rk_BrI5g.
> 
> Crown: Heavy sits the head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1fYYqa4q_U

> _She is a rose, a tiny blip of beauty in a town condemned. Soon, Lothering was to be a scattering of ash and rubble. Soon, she would be a queen and a commander and a Hero and a lover and a wife. But at this moment, with a backdrop of bloodstained beauty, she takes the rose from his rough hands, looks upon his eyes and smiles, lovingly, knowingly. She knows that the the rose’s petals would soon fall and its stalk and leaves would wither away, but she would never be without it, not truly. It was within her now, a red bloom tucked deep within her armor, a reminder of what Could Be in spite of what Was. She is a rose, growing in darkness, but hoping to bring light wherever she went. To Orzammar and the Brecilian Forest, lifting the shadows from the deep caverns and the dense wood, and Redcliffe and Kinloch Hold, to free those shackled and trapped there. She takes his hand and he gives her sunbeams, and in his light, she blossoms. She feels her body bloom where he touches her. I am his rose, he is my light. But that would be later, but for now, she takes the rose and looks into his eyes and feels love swell up to her skin._

His crown is bold and gold and old, the crown of his father and brother.

Warriors had worn this crown for hundreds of years before him, back to Calenhad. His head does not wobble under the weight of it, and she was surprised how quickly he had accepted the burden. He had laughed when she mentioned it, a few nights before the wedding.

“Oh, this old thing?” He’d said merrily, tossing the crown on their bed—the one they were not supposed to share until after the marriage had been consecrated before the eyes of Ferelden and the Maker. “This weighs nothing. No, it’s the legacy that’s heavy. Though the throne is a damned sight more uncomfortable than you’d think. I get it, I get it. You’d think the petitioners would want the king’s bum as cushy as possible when they come to beg his mercy or his support or whatever.”

His eyes had deep bags under them. Cheekiness rolled off his tongue and merriment danced in his eyes, but there were shadows that he did not share even with  
her. Not yet. Not until now. Perhaps the weight would not be so heavy shared. But then, she had her command. She had the Wardens to lead, expecting her to walk the Fereldan outpost into new glory, and he would have to remain behind on the throne, held in place with gold bolts.

She crawled into bed, and he curled up next to her, his head in her lap. His tired eyes looked up at her with such fondness and love that she expected her heart to burst.

His voice was rough from long hours at court, so he said nothing, and those tired eyes closed without another word. As he drifted to sleep, she twisted her fingers idly in his hair, hoping he would not be disturbed by the errant sob that wracked her body. It would pass when morning’s come.


	3. Fire and Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elissa remembers the wildness of her youth on the moors of Highever, never giving herself the chance to consider the what-might-have-beens. Those burned with her childhood home. 
> 
> After the wedding, but not long after, Alistair thinks of the legacy he will leave behind—if there is a legacy to be had at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massacre of Highever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bimam2j2gEg
> 
> Children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikJQoPXYnLo

> _She is the daughter of Teryn and Teyrna Cousland. She played with her mabari pup on the moors of Highever, the ones that seemed endless until they jutted out over the Waking Sea. When she was small, she had once come to her parents’ room, fearful and pale and crying, for she had heard someone screaming out on the heath. Father had lit a candle and pulled on a gown and taken her by the hand back to her room. Just the wind, pup, he had said. Just the wind, and wind shall never hurt you. It fills our sails and carries our arrows, turns the mills and calls the clouds.  You are safe here, pup. But she had not been safe there, and Highever was a ruin of rubble and ash. They said the winds had howled at the injustice, the cruelty of the Howes, and whipped the flames atop the castle so high that the light could be seen all the way to Amaranthine, to remind Arl Howe of his crime. Duncan had scooped her up into the saddle of a tall courser and ridden hard, long into the night, away from the only home she had ever known or wanted. The fire burned so long that she mistook it for the rising sun, but when the sun rose, the glow was far behind them. She hoped against all hope that they would find Fergus and the Highever men somewhere on the road as they darted in and out of forests to avoid Howe patrols, but her hope tasted like salt and heather and sea air all mixed the bitterness of burning and the copper tang of blood, and oh, the screaming—the moors screamed and cried out for their daughter to return. The great howling sounded like Elissa on the wind, carrying her from where she had been all her life to where she is now. Always the wind._
> 
> _They arrived at Ostagar and she was no longer the daughter of Teryn and Teryna Cousland. She was a Grey Warden. Her brothers and sisters were Wardens, the children of the Blight. Cousland was a dead house seated in a ruin atop a hilly cliffside moor. But she remembers those screams, oh, and she remembers that glowing blaze behind her as she fled. Where do flames go when they burn down everything you knew? She asked herself, staring at Rendon Howe. They go to your blood and your belly, your heart and your steel. But when she killed him, she did not feel the heat within her, but only a cold emptiness that tasted of ash. She wonders if Alistair felt ice when he had killed Loghain, and she kissed him that night after the Landsmeet to see if she could taste ash on his lips. He tasted of honey and light, as he always had, and the saltiness of sweat and tears. She kisses him again today, and he does not taste of sweat or tears or smoke or ash. For the first time in what seems like years, she tastes home._

They sit on the banks of Drakon River, staring out into the Amaranthine Sea.Though Denerim is rebuilding, he insisted that they spend one day out of court and out of sight, so they took two horses and rode out just before sunrise, laughing as the bewildered guards shouted stuttered “Your Majesty!” after Alistair. They had not known what to call her. Lady Cousland? Arlessa Elissa of Amaranthine? Warden- Commander? Lady Hero? Soon they would call her Your Majesty, for she would be married and crowned queen aside Alistair.

Breathless and buoyant, they arrived at the riverside clearing and read and laughed and kissed and sparred and practiced their dance (a Remigold, to Alistair’s dismay). But now, they lie curled into each other.

“Elissa?” Alistair asks quietly as she dozes with her head on him. She likes it when he speaks while her ear is pressed to his chest so that she can hear his breaths and feel the vibrations of his voice. “What if this is it? What if this is all we are?”

She does not move. “This is all we are, my love. Just us, here.”

“I don’t want to call him Maric. Or Cailan.”

“Alistair?”

“Our son. If-if we ever have a son. If we have children, I mean. I hope we do. I should...I should like to be a father, I think. But not to a little Cailan, or a little Maric.” He takes a deep breath. “I know we’re not sure if it’s possible, two Grey Wardens as we are.”

“Oh, Alistair...you will have an heir. Do not worry, my love. Not yet. When we are married. Have faith.”

“I don’t...I don’t want an heir. I want a child. I want to…hold our children, and braid my daughters’ hair and and teach our sons to dance even if I am rubbish at it, and I want to tell them legends and whisper them to sleep at night. I want to see children with your eyes and your hair and your kindness and bravery—”

“And your smile and your nose and your strength and your gentleness and Maker, your ears, surely.” He laughs and she hums along with him. “We will get there, love.”

Children, she thinks. A family with Alistair, nieces and nephews for Fergus to visit and play with...like little Oren. And should Fergus never remarry or father children, would she then become the Lady of Highever? And her children following with her? A secondborn child to Highever, while their brother or sister sits the throne of Ferelden?

She thinks of a child, wrapped in gold and red blankets, in Alistair’s arms. His hair, her eyes, all his mischief and all her persistence, a dangerous combination. She hoped Ferelden would survive such a perfect storm of trouble.

Maker, let me hold them, let us meet them.

“I don’t want to name them after my father or brother. Perhaps...Fergus? Or Duncan? Or Riordan?” Or Bryce or Eleanor or Oriana or Oren. Their namesakes would carry a heavy weight on their shoulders, the burden of the deceased. The legacy of a memory.

“My love,” she says, propping herself up on her elbow and looking at those beautiful, warm eyes. “When we look into their eyes for the first time, the name will come to us, and they will be perfect.”

“I can’t wait for that day.” He wraps his arms around her waist and twists her over so she falls over him, letting out a shriek of laughter. He kisses her neck and she can feel his lips smile against her skin, almost a smirk. “I’m sure the process will be plenty fun too. Why don’t we give it a go?”


	4. Duty and Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amaranthine calls the newly-crowned queen to handle tragedy so soon after her joy. 
> 
> Ten years later, that same queen traverses the barren and windswept leagues of the Anderfels, for her king, for herself, for the future of her family and kingdom. Some days, she wonders if all that had been Elissa Cousland has been erased, and all she is now is Queen and Warden-Commander. 
> 
> Her search is not in vain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awakening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFWFhTFohk
> 
> The Cure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkb0kDacjs

> _She is the Warden-Commander of Ferelden and she dresses in silence in her lonely room in Amaranthine. The crisis there has been resolved, and she longs to return to Denerim. Her armor feels heavier than usual, and cold. The sun is rising through the window and the silverite takes on a dusky grey-lavender-blue in kind. She will leave Sigrun and Nathaniel in command in Amaranthine, and Velanna, Ohgren and Anders will begin recruitment efforts across Ferelden, with special localized efforts amongst the Dalish, the dwarves and the mages. She has penned letters to Weisshaupt and Soldier’s Peak and to each of the Warden strongholds across Thedas with a detailed report of what happened here in Amaranthine. She plans to leave by way of Highever, to memorialize those lost and to assist in rebuilding efforts, although Fergus’s curt letter seemed to indicate she’d be mainly relegated to moral support. She has not been back, and she casts Highever out of her mind for the time being, and sends it back to the part of her mind that rings with the song of the Taint, where all lost things go to be wilfully ignored and forgotten. She finishes buckling her armor and gathers her papers together, despite her body’s protests after the protracted battles Amaranthine’s Grey Wardens had experienced recently. Vigil’s Keep is battered but remains standing, and already the legends are spreading from bard to bard and minstrel to minstrel about the legendary keep and its protectors, who held out against Blighted invaders many times their number. The fires in Amaranthine have largely been put out, the dead brought before the Chantry with huge pyres built to honor them. The defenders of Soldier’s Keep had been immortalized during the night, and her bones ache with a lethargy only grief could bring about._
> 
> _She knows duty requires that she quit the Keep formally tomorrow as the Warden-Commander, handing off her responsibilities to Nathaniel and Sigrun as regents and Warden Lieutenants. But Maker, how she wants to steal away into the night and crawl into Alistair’s bed in the dead of night so that dawn may shine on the two of them together at last. Soon, love, soon. A giddy smile bubbles out of her suddenly, childish and impudent, at the thought of dropping everything with not even a word and running away to her husband. But she forces it away. The Maker smiles sadly on His Grey Wardens, they say. The Warden-Commander must carry herself with grim resolution against a backdrop of sacrifice and honor. She is the Warden-Commander, but oh, how she longs to march home._

She had not been at all surprised to see that the Anderfels are a grey and hard and cruel place. It is only fitting for the birthplace of the Grey Wardens, after all. Standing on this steppe overlooking the Blightlands, aptly named and aptly barren, she longs for Home. She thought she had known winds, growing up on the wild moors on the coast of the Waking Sea. She thought she had known grey, of Ferelden and Denerim, with its grey smoke and fog, grey buildings, grey cobblestones in dewy morning light. She thought she had known barrenness, for that is what they whispered of her in the halls of the court, and for that was what the empty halls of the palace rang with every day, a painful absence of the family she longed for, not the one she had lost, but hers all the same. 

But cruelty, yes—she knows that familiar, haunting tune. It rings sharp and clear in this empty land; it sings of an ancient return, a melody of longing and belonging, a champion who rises from the Below to the Above to reclaim all that had been usurped. A primitive, primordial vengeance, an anathematic army massed of those castaways and pariahs borne up from perdition to scourge and salt the earth wherever they go. She feels it pull her towards the Deep Roads, and she fights it with blood and bile and bone, but she cannot run from it forever. She feels the pull of the Calling louder now than ever before, driving her north, away from the Home she has made for herself. It is within her, and worse, it is within Alistair. It sickens her to know that it is afflict her love, her king, and through him, will infect Denerim and all of Ferelden. 

How had she come to love that place? When had that first bud of  home bloomed in her heart, in that deep and dark crevasse where once she thought only ash and ruin had remained? 

The Anderfel sun is hot on her dyed leather armor and silverite cuirass. Her beloved roan mare had died of exhaustion and dehydration near the Orlesian border, and the courser she had purchased from a half-rate horsemaster in the Blasted Hills had run off as she neared the Blightlands. The horsemaster had chalked the courser’s skittishness to the green sunburst in the sky to the southeast, but Elissa knew better. The horse could sense the sickness within her, and reacted in kind. She wishes she could have run away too, but there was no leaving the Calling behind. The Taint follows her where she goes. Such is the burden of the Wardens. 

She climbs down the side of the steppe, despite her protesting muscles and burnt, chapped skin. When she finally arrives at her destination, she feels the fight all but drain out of her. This is her last lead. The song is so loud, deafening, threatening to drown everything else out of her exhausted body. She can feel the love for her country, her people, her husband, buckling under the strain. 

Maker, if He can hear her, save him. He let His Bride die upon the pyre, and if this must be her fate too, so be it. If it is not enough for her, then let it be enough for him. If there is a Cure to be had, please, let Alistair live, for she has known sacrifice and she is happy—grateful, even—to pay that price if it means he should never have to suffer the same sacrifice. He has sacrificed too much for Ferelden, for her. Let this be an end. 

The tomb is crumbling and unassuming. She thought it was an outcropping of rocks from a distance, but as she places her hand on the old stone door, she feels the Taint within her protest. She pushes it forward, and stares into the blackness of the abyss before her. Dust and power and magic filters out towards her, and both the shadow before her and the song within her scream out in antipathy, as though they were two opposing armies calling their war cries before battle. 

She smiles. She knows she has found what she is looking for. 


	5. Love and Unity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elissa Cousland marries the king. She finds that the King is not so different from the man, the bastard would-be Templar, with whom she had saved the world. 
> 
> Alistair, after his wedding, also finds that being King has no significant differences to being Alistair the Warden—he is, after all, seemingly as awkward as ever around the woman he loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wedding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q-TWgfHmNo
> 
> Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YhHM1ybfPI
> 
> A special thanks to stillsart.tumblr.com for her beautiful commission of Alistair and Elissa's moment between their wedding and their presentation to their people. This art and the fic were a gift to a good friend of ours, and I could not be prouder of the magnificent work stillsart produced, and has continued to produce.

 

> _She is Elissa, for this final moment. As the Revered Mother speaks, she smoothes her hands on her gown, beautiful and blue and new, but achingly familiar. Silvery-blue samite with dark blue brocade, glittering jewels sewn into the fabric, the Cousland vines painstakingly embroidered into the silk. She wonders if her mother was this nervous on her wedding day, but somehow cannot imagine the brave Eleanor Mac Eanraig of the Waking Sea as anything but the Seawolf. Her mother had been as comfortable in silks as in steel, and Elissa supposes there was a time where she had been too. She wonders what her mother would say to her on this day, and what she would think, seeing her daughter marry the King._
> 
> _But then she stops wondering, and she swallows her fears and forces a smile. Her heart hammers but her head stays steady. They call her Hero, and Warden-Commander, and Lady Cousland, and Arlessa, but when she looks into Alistair’s eyes, she knows that he sees her only as herself. Nothing more, nothing less._
> 
> _The Revered Mother ends her homily, but Elissa can hardly hear her. Her thoughts are rattling about in her brain and as she places her hand on Alistair’s, she hopes he does not feel her hands sweat and shake. She hopes he does not mind the hard calluses on her fingers, or the scar tissue bisecting her palm where one of Howe’s daggers had sliced her. She knows he does not, but at that moment, her doubts have never been so deafening._
> 
> _As the Revered Mother wraps the binding fabric around their hands, Fergus and Arl Eamon hand each of them a slim gold ring. Elissa loves Fergus, but does not love the sadness that haunts his eyes. He stands in their mother’s place, and Eamon stands in Alistair’s father’s place, and she wonders if he feels King Maric’s absence as acutely as she feels her mother’s. But Maric had only ever been a name to Alistair, a name and a heavy weight on his shoulders, a man seldom met and a relation begrudgingly respected. Eleanor and Bryce Cousland had been the world to Elissa and Fergus, with all its splendor, every sunrise and sunset, every drop of water and breath of air and blade of grass, the sun and the moon and every star in the sky, the sweet and the sour, the sighs and the sobs and the songs. The silk and the steel. They had been everything until one night, they were only smoke glowing bright and ephemeral in the distance._
> 
> _They had practiced it many times before—many a bride and groom have dropped the rings on the Chantry floor as they try to slip the ring on their fingers with one hand. Alistair slips the cold ring onto her finger, beside the small silver signet ring that Fergus had retrieved from the ruins of Highever. Her mother’s ring, the sun-and-moon of Mac Eanraig encircled with the Cousland vine-on-argent. Her mother’s ring is no longer alone, now joined by a silverite-winged lion of Theirin, crowned with Cousland vines. Holding Alistair’s wedding ring in her fingers, she feels a sudden calm wash over her. Her hand stops shaking, and her breath evens. His eyes are on her, as are the rest of the nobles’, Fergus’s, the Revered Mother’s, but holding that gold ring and being held in that golden gaze, her hand wrapped with his, she has suddenly found something she had lost amidst smoke and rubble._
> 
> _S_ _he feels the fire of battle in her veins, the soft breath of love in her lungs, the cold wind of terror in her bones, but his skin on hers, and it is all she needs to ground her. She slips the ring onto his finger steadily, and he leans down to kiss her, and the Chantry falls away from them. She closes her eyes and kisses him back._

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry, I was so nervous.” He says as soon as they are alone in the vestibule. He seems to be all limbs, pacing around in tiny, tight circles, holding his crown in his hands. The Chantry sounds like a flurry of activity from beyond the closed doors, but surely, she thinks, it cannot be any more frenetic than her husband (husband!) is now. She stares at him in bemusement, and he balks. “You can’t tell me you didn’t notice! I flubbed the words three times! In the Chant of Light! I was a damn Templar—well, almost—and I got the Chant of Light wrong!”

She barks out a laugh, and then another, and then she descends into helpless giggles. She hopes she will not suffocate, between the laughter and the bloody corset, because that would put somewhat of a damper on her wedding day. “Alistair, I tripped on my own dress walking up to the altar, and I almost dropped your ring onto the floor. I assure you, no one will have even noticed. I certainly didn’t.” 

“You didn’t trip! I was watching you! Maker, how could I do anything but watch you? I mean—” He rushes up to her and kisses her suddenly, and breaks just as suddenly. “Come on. Let’s go get married again, so I can watch you walk up to me again, and I can have Wynne Mind Blast me so maybe I can forget what you looked like what you first walked in, so it’ll be like the first time again. I’ll go get Eamon and Fergus and the Revered Mother—” He kisses her again. 

“Alistair,” She says when she breaks the kiss and holds his hands, stilling him a moment. “If I have to wear this bloody corset for any longer than I have to, I’ll put you in it. And you’ll still have to dance the Remigold as your ribs are crushed. I can assure you, it’s worse than that cracked rib you got in the Brecilian Forest, because you still have to look pretty as you suffer.”

“Ah, didn’t you know, wife? Pain is beauty. I don’t know why you stand to suffer every single day, looking like that.” 

She groans. 

“Hey! You married me, so you signed up for this!” He says, and she tilts her head up to stare him down, that impish, foolhardy, reckless stare he said she would get whenever she had a particularly daring or daft idea, like entering the Proving or surprising him with a kiss in camp. But he just grips her hands tighter and smiles fondly and runs his thumbs over the callused, dry skin of her hands, paying special attention to each mark and scar, and then, finally, the ring. 

“You had the rings enchanted, didn’t you?” She whispers then, the playful fight in her eyes fleeting and giving way to immeasurable love. 

He kisses her softly. “Defense, to protect my love,” he murmurs against her lips. “Health, so that we may live to old age together.” He brings her hand up and kisses it softly. “Warmth, so even if we are apart, you will never feel cold without me.” 

She wonders how on Thedas her dress could contain her, when she was so full to bursting with love, with fondness, with hope. She would marry him a thousand times, a thousand ways, suffer a thousand corsets and fight a thousand enemies, if only to feel worthy in that moment. 

Some call him Usurper and Bastard, born of betrayal and lust, and some call her Kingmaker and Kennelmaster, as though Alistair were some mabari hound she kept on a golden leash, and others call her worse than that, but at that moment, she would weather it all. At that moment, she hears the crowds below the palace balcony calling out raucously for their king.

“Husband, they’re calling for you. Your people await. ” She gestures to the open square in front of the palace, resplendent with red and gold banners and flags, red rose petals and green ferns, and thousands of citizens packed in, craning to see a glimpse of the golden King Alistair who ended the Blight before it began, and his Warden love who slew the Archdemon and lived to tell the tale.   

“No, my love. Our people are calling for you.”

He kisses her ring once more and then holds her hand in his, and their twin rings feel alive and warm, a beating heart shared between them. They turn to the balcony, their hands entwined, and she stares out onto her new world and greets it with a fond and familiar smile.

 


End file.
